It Doesn't Get Any Bigger
Louisiana Tech has a huge game Saturday and everybody knows it.
In 2015, Louisiana Tech was rolling: the Bulldogs were 7-3 and were coming off of three straight blowout wins (Tech beat UNT, MTSU, and Rice by a combined 143-45) - then the bye week came.
The Bulldogs beat UTEP on the road 17-15 and you could tell they looked rusty. Maybe it was the bye week or maybe it was the long trip to El Paso; but something was not right.
Louisiana Tech Head Coach Skip Holtz talked about the UTEP game at his weekly press conference the next week. “I am proud of the way this team competed, looking back at UTEP last week," he said. "It is never easy to play on the road. It is never easy to play in a conference game. When you get late in the season, there is a lot on film and it makes it a little easier for teams to prepare for each other. I think some teams are really going to play with an extra edge. I certainly thought UTEP did that this weekend. I was really proud of the way our team competed and hung in there. We told them that they needed to be patient and that it was going to be a 60-minute game.”
The final week of the season, the 8-3 Southern Miss Golden Eagles came in and steamrolled the 8-3 Bulldogs, 58-24. USM put up 555 yards of offense while the Bulldogs had 7 turnovers. The game was at 11:00 AM and it was two days after Thanksgiving. It might as well been on Black Friday, because that's how things felt in Ruston.
Fast forward to 2016, and this time it was on Black Friday, the 8-3 Bulldogs rolled in to Hattiesburg and lost to the 5-6 Eagles by a score of 39-24. The Eagles came up with 426 yards of offense while LATech had just 254 yards and 3 turnovers. Again, Tech had a bye week leading into the Friday night game.
So does Southern Miss have Louisiana Tech's number? The All-Time series suggests they do, with the Eagles holding a 33-15 advantage. It's been a little closer in more recent history. USM leads 14-9 in the last 50 years and every game between 1977 and 1985 was in Hattiesburg - that's before the Bulldogs moved up to Divison 1A in 1988.
So the Bulldogs were the scrappy little also ran in the rivalry, but they got their licks in. Now LATech is on equal footing with USM - they are in the same conference. After losing 13-12 and 19-17 in 2010 and 2011, Tech won the "Rivalry in Dixie" in both 2013 and 2014. Things were changing and Tech was not a pushover anymore.
That's what made 2015 and 2016 so surprising. Tech was the favorite in both games and fell flat. Louisiana Tech fans have been pretty quiet on message boards and on twitter this time around. Holtz and his team are saying the right things, and they aren't saying much. From all reports, practices have been intense.
This game is HUGE. Nothing needs to be said, it needs to all be left out on the field. Tech is 3-3 and while catching the Eagles in October is better than Thanksgiving week (when Tech's fall quarter is already over) - there is so much at stake. The Bulldogs are 1-1 in the conference and now home games against Florida Atlantic and North Texas look much tougher than they did just 6 weeks ago.
Louisiana Tech has to get their offense going. In four of their last five games, they have scored 21, 23, 16, and 22. Southern Miss is 20th in the country in Total Defense and 23rd in Scoring Defense, giving up just 18.8 yards per game. The Eagles are very stout against the run, on third down, and in the red zone.
The weather should be nice enough. Ideally, they game could stand to be moved up to 3pm since there is a 40% chance of rain that night. Tech fans need to come out in force and get behind their team. Weather should not be an issue and I refuse to discuss any other games on television being a problem. If that is an issue for you at all, or even a thought, then you just don't get it.
This is Louisiana Tech football, this is the Rivalry in Dixie, this is the Bulldogs against the Eagles - nothing more needs to be said. It's time for the Bulldogs to show their stuff out on the field with 27,000 strong cheering them on.